Organizations worldwide are rethinking their workforce strategies. They are trying to accommodate remote-friendly policies at a time when flexibility is becoming a primary aspect in the battle for talent. The primary challenge behind building a strong hybrid and remote work culture is the tensions around the differences in time spent in the office. To address the issue, leaders must create a work culture of “Excellence from Anywhere” that focuses on deliverables rather than your employees’ work location.
Best Practices to Establish a Successful Hybrid and Remote Workforce
Early planning helps organizations build a seamless hybrid strategy. Your plan must include your office’s primary function, figuring out your employee’s schedules, creating new policies supporting the switch, and equipping your team with all the tools they need to excel in the new role. Besides, enlisted are other essential strategies you must adopt that would aid in a smooth and successful transition of hybrid-remote working.
1: Hire a head of the remote team
Employees would look for clear leadership and guidance when working remotely, particularly in an office. Similarly, businesses adopting hybrid models effectively follow a two-work environment, which many thinks can bring “chaos and destruction” if the organizations fail to implement the model meaningfully.
It is why organizational leaders must hire a head of the remote team responsible for helping organizations turn remote working into a strategic advantage rather than a challenge. It is best to appoint a leader with extensive remoter experience with a history of successful business or cultural transformations.
2: Develop healthy workplaces
Companies are investing their capital in creating hybrid-friendly workplaces. However, it imposes little benefits for those employees choosing to work remotely or require working remotely. Leaders must ensure that the workspaces optimize productivity and healthy work habits regardless of location. It involves giving a budget to team members to select the equipment that matches their working preferences. Leaders looking forward to acquiring and retaining talent must cultivate a work environment that is all-inclusive of needs and preferences.
3: Denying unnecessary meetings
Working for distributed teams requires checking in with the employees. Leaders must not view meetings as the remedy for loss of visual oversight. However, encouraging asynchronous working is the best way to make work more inclusive, enabling the employees to work flexibly in what suits them the best. To achieve and encourage asynchronous work, organizations must eliminate the mentality that all meetings are essential. You can set a clear agenda for each meeting and record and document the outcomes. It helps your employees to decide those meetings that are relevant to them and decide whether to attend them or not accordingly. When you reduce meetings, you reduce the need for all your employees to be online simultaneously, facilitating flexible working patterns.
4: Create opportunities for employees to connect
Isolation forms a major issue for most remote workers. Therefore, offering connection opportunities for employees is important. Your organization must institute policies encouraging full-time remote employees to meet with their in-office counterparts. Moreover, you can create communication channels (using software) that promote social interaction between colleagues with shared interests.
5: Incorporate next-gen experiences
Virtual places need to merge with physical spaces if you desire a hybrid workplace to transform your business. Technology plays a great role in helping people accomplish their tasks throughout the day. It takes intelligent devices and intuitive software that facilitates collaboration and offers insights to enhance employee experiences. Intelligent hybrid workplace solutions create productive work environments where everyone in the team, remote or in-person, receives the best experience.
Conclusion
Hybrid and remote work is here to stay, and employees must be flexible when working from a brick-and-mortar office and working remotely. Businesses need to adopt the new trend and maintain employee productivity.
